Testimonial letter from Lucy Lonsdale
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Lucy Lonsdale. It is "Exhibit A-601" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 165 Palm Street, TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN My name is Lucy Lonsdale and I am fifty-five years of age, a mother of five children and grandmother of three. I have written nine novelettes for teenagers and five books on Australian birds as well as doing extensive research writing for two encyclopaedias. For thirty years I was a ’born-again’ Christian, actively associated with the Church of England and teaching Scripture at Primary and Secondary schools in Sydney, Australia. I first became aware of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh when my eldest son wrote from Poona, India, to say that he had become a sannyasin. My husband and I were concerned and so, in 1978, we travelled to Poona to find out for ourselves about this man. We spent two months visiting the Ashram, taking part in meditations, reading Bhagwan’s books, and each morning, listening to Bhagwan speaking for almost two hours while a crowd of about two thousand sat silently at his feet. We also met Bhagwan face to face and had personal conversation with him. Towards the end of this period, first my husband, and then myself, decided to become sannyasins. As a Christian I had at first been suspicious, thinking that this man was an anti-Christ or maybe setting himself up as God, but I soon found that Bhagwan led me into a closer, more personal, relationship with Jesus than I had ever experienced in the church and that Bhagwan expected no worship from me. To me, Bhagwan is the wisest, most intelligent, highly educated person I have ever had the honour to meet. His morning lectures were a delight in their wit, clarity, depth of understanding and width of knowledge of every subject he discussed. These lectures have since been transcribed into more than 350 books and translated into several languages. In recent years I have met sannyasins from almost every country in the world; I have seen newspapers in many languages praising Bhagwan and I have become even more convinced that he is the foremost religious leader in the world today with a message that breaks all barriers of race, creed, colour or language. With regard to his vision that is now being enacted in Oregon I would like to remark on one small aspect of the project. I visited the site in 1982 and, as an enthusiastic birdwatcher, was saddened to see so few birds there. The arid mountainous terrain with sparse trees and little undergrowth gave poor shelter and I particularly noted the absence of birdsong. I visited again this year and was delighted to see a great variety of birds and hear many bird calls which were new to me. No doubt these birds were encouraged to the area by the tree plantings, flower gardens, vegetable and fodder crops and the General 'greening' of the land at Rajneeshpuram. A few birds are a small matter perhaps but nevertheless indicative of the blossoming of growth and expansion of land, animals and people which becomes possible under the guidance of a Living Master. I feel very strongly that the United States of America, and the State of Oregon in particular, can only benefit by allowing Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to remain in residence. In sincerity, |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
